Love of the Land: November 2017

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Gaza’s Latest Sampling in Self-Inflicted Misery - by Evelyn Gordon

...Meanwhile, much of the world will doubtless continue to blame Israel for Gaza’s woes. That will make many self-described humanitarians feel good about themselves, but it will do absolutely nothing to ease Gaza’s misery.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
29 November '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/gaza-latest-lesson-self-inflicted-misery/

Observing developments since Hamas and Fatah signed their latest reconciliation deal in October is an object lesson in just how much of the Palestinians’ misery is self-inflicted–or to be more precise, inflicted by their two rival governments.

The first thing that happened after implementation of the deal in early November was that prices of merchandise imported to Gaza plummeted by up to 25 percent. Having your money go 25 percent further is an obvious boon to anyone, but especially for impoverished Gazans. Prices fell because, for the first time in a decade, Gazans weren’t paying taxes to two different governments–the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza–but only to one. As part of the reconciliation deal, Hamas handed control of Gaza’s borders to the PA and dismantled the tax collection checkpoints it had set up at the border crossings.

This long-overdue relief didn’t last long. Earlier this month, I pointed out that, since Hamas would remain the dominant military power in Gaza even after the deal was implemented, it wasn’t clear how anyone could stop it from extorting taxes again once it had gotten what it wanted from the deal. I overestimated Hamas’s patience. Though the PA has yet to fulfill most of its promises to Hamas, the latter has already resumed collecting taxes.

True, the checkpoints are gone, but Hamas found another method to seek the rents on which it survives. It simply summoned several hundred businessmen to appear in its offices and demanded payment of tax on everything they have imported to Gaza since the reconciliation was signed. After all, Hamas needs that money; it has rockets and tunnels to build. So who cares that Gazans will once again be paying inflated prices they can ill afford?

The reconciliation was also supposed to bring another benefit: the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been closed almost continuously for the last four years. Since Israel allows only limited traffic from Gaza through its territory, Rafah’s closure has meant that leaving Gaza is virtually impossible for most Palestinians.

Israel and Egypt have restricted traffic from Gaza for the same reason: Hamas’s incessant efforts to undermine both countries’ security. In Egypt’s case, Hamas has cooperated enthusiastically with Islamic State’s affiliate in Sinai, providing money, weapons, training, medical care and refuge in Gaza for terrorists fleeing Egyptian security forces. An open border would simply have made it easier for Hamas to supply all these services, as Israel can attest. Israel allows thousands of Palestinians to enter its territory from Gaza every month for business, medical care or transit to another country, and Hamas has exploited that traffic to smuggle everything from cash to explosives.

Let's play the JVP game: Anti-Zionist or anti-Jewish? - by Elder of Ziyon

...The panelists from JVP are thrilled with the small resurgence of media-fanned neo-Nazis in America because they can use them as bogeymen representing real antisemitism, that they are of course against. But they would never, ever admit that Arabs are the biggest antisemites in the world today - and even most of these cartoons pretend to be only anti-Israel while trading in age-old anti-Jewish stereotypes. There is not much difference between what these Arab cartoons represent and what the "Jewish Voice of Peace" represents.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 November '17..

Since we have heard all about the "Jewish Voice for Peace" panel at the New School where celebrated haters of Israel spoke about how much they pretend to hate some kinds of antisemitism, let's play a game.

Are these cartoons antisemitic or anti-Israel?

It's against settlements, so it muse be anti-Zionist according to JVP, right?

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A Truly Gift Laden Christmas Has Come Early for Hezbollah Chief Nasrallah - by Ron Prosor

...In charge of UNIFIL’s force in Southern Lebanon is a man that has become more of an enabler for Hezbollah and Iran than a problem solver for the UN Security Council. Maj. Gen. Michael Beary, has said he sees no evidence of weapons being illegally transferred and stockpiled in the area. “If there was a large cache of weapons,” he said last summer, “we would know about it.” Maj. Gen. Beary – you had one job! As the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has said, Beary “seems to be the only person in south Lebanon who is blind to what Hezbollah is doing.”

Amb. Ron Proser..
Algemeiner.com..
29 November '17..

Tis’ the season to be jolly. But for the not so jolly bearded man from the Dahia district of Beirut in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, and his Iranian bosses, Christmas has come early, and their presents are gift-wrapped in UN paper.

Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council debated a report recently published by UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Anyone who reads this report would think that UNIFIL has invented a completely new fantasy version of Lebanon. Astonishingly, the report ignores the single biggest threat to its mandate – the systematic rearmament of Hezbollah in South Lebanon, along Israel’s northern border. It is common knowledge in the intelligence communities of the United States, the UK, France, Israel and most likely any country that employs intelligence officers, that Hezbollah has amassed over 150,000 short and medium range missiles directed towards Israeli cities and threatening the entire Middle East. The only ones out of the loop are the people on the ground whose responsibility is to prevent such re-armament. Instead of detailing the locations of weapon stockpiles and asking the UN Security council to strengthen its mandate so they are able to raid them, the report goes into incredible detail of the amount of Lebanese shepherds spotted near the border area. 420 if anyone is interested. UNIFIL is literally counting sheep, while Hezbollah continues to grow the heaviest non-governmental military force in modern history.

In charge of UNIFIL’s force in Southern Lebanon is a man that has become more of an enabler for Hezbollah and Iran than a problem solver for the UN Security Council. Maj. Gen. Michael Beary, has said he sees no evidence of weapons being illegally transferred and stockpiled in the area. “If there was a large cache of weapons,” he said last summer, “we would know about it.” Maj. Gen. Beary – you had one job! As the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has said, Beary “seems to be the only person in south Lebanon who is blind to what Hezbollah is doing.”

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Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Why “Settler-Colonial” Israel Needs The Palestinian Arabs - by Sheri Oz

...Wolfe established his reputation by studying the settler-colonialist society of Australia. Might have been nice had he restricted applying his “penetrative insight” to what he knew best – Australia. Because he obviously knew nothing about Jews if he could say that the differences between Mizrachim and Ashkenazim are greater than our commonalites. Unfortunately, the truth matters not a whit if you can find a way to have a lie demonize The Jewish People.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
29 November '17..

Without them, our whole “settler-colonial” society would collapse from within, according to a world renowned scholar.

Patrick Wolfe (1949-2016) was an Australian anthropologist; he seems to be one of the founders of colonialism studies. It is him we have to thank for having popularized the preposterous idea that Israel is a European settler-colonial project, one that has evidently captured the imaginations of historians and other scholars who hate Jews. His work fulfills their need for something seemingly academic upon which to heap their vile and to elegantly express their wish to see the demise of Jewish sovereignty over our indigenous homeland.

In a forum dedicated just to him, we find the following amazing concept:

The existence of Mizrahim or Arab Jews, and their position in unequal relations of power with Ashkenazi or European Jews, mean that the Palestinian ‘other’ is required to maintain the illusory homogeneity and unity of the Israeli state. As Wolfe’s penetrative insight explains,

‘Israel cannot survive without its Palestinians. Without the Palestinians – which is to say, when everyone is Jewish – the Mizrahim once again become Arabs…When everything is Jewish, difference itself becomes Jewish – a return to the precise condition that Zionism sought to suppress in order to build a nation out of groups of people whose differences from one another were greater than their commonalities’.

Now if I thought that Wolfe was a Moslem, I might say that he was projecting here.

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Further tepid BBC coverage of anti-Israel bigotry in sport - by Hadar Sela

...It is of course highly unlikely (one hopes) that BBC coverage of any story about sportspeople repeatedly encountering discrimination, bigotry and state-ordered boycotts because of their skin colour, gender or sexual orientation would be quite as lukewarm as is the corporation’s repeated portrayal of those concerning Israelis.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
28 November '17..

The BBC’s track record on reporting anti-Israel bigotry in international sport is not particularly laudable. While some incidents are simply ignored, others get coverage that is often tepid and euphemistic.

That approach was again evident on November 27th in two BBC reports concerning an Iranian wrestler who was instructed by his coaches to lose a match so as to avoid meeting an Israeli in the next round of a championship.

The BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour‘ – presented by Tim Franks – included an item on that story introduced as follows: [emphasis in italics in the original]

Franks: “We’re often told that sport and politics don’t mix – or at least shouldn’t mix. But at the under-23 world championship of wrestling currently being held in Poland, there is intense speculation that sport and politics did collide and sport lost. Some Iranian wrestling fans on social media are claiming that their man deliberately lost a match on Saturday in order to avoid facing an Israeli opponent in the next round. Houchang Chehabi is an Iranian-born professor of international relations at Boston University. What’s the evidence that the bout was thrown?”

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They know if UNRWA disappears, so does their Palestinian fake "refugee" status - by Elder of Ziyon

...UNRWA cannot continue the way it has been. Not when the number of fake "refugees" under its working definition increases by tens of thousands a year. Something's got to give. But UNRWA and the Palestinians agree that they don't want to actually think about that.

Elder of Ziyon..
28 November '17..

Teachers in Gaza are upset at UNRWA.

Apparently, UNRWA (reasonably) decided to dismiss 164 teachers for not having bachelor's degrees, a requirement.

The teacher's union is fighting the decision, saying that it violates the "dignity" of all UNRWA workers. They are holding several meetings all over the territories.

The description of the end of one of these meetings is quite revealing:

At the end of the meeting, it was confirmed that the teachers and teachers refused to sign any papers or deal with the decisions of the Agency's administration. The aim of these measures is to steal the toil and efforts of the teachers through a planned policy of piracy that begins with stealing the wages of the teachers and ends with doing away with the issue of the refugees .

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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Another American president rescues the Palestinians - by Stephen M. Flatow

...it took the administration about two days to surrender to the pressure—and it only took that long because Thanksgiving got in the way. Suddenly the administration trotted out a new “interpretation”—actually, a misrepresentation—of the law. The PLO-PA can keep its office so long as the activities conducted there are “related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.” What a joke. The PLO-PA considers everything it does to be a contribution to peace. That includes promoting boycotts and sanctions against Israel, comparing Israel to the Nazis, and inciting the Palestinian Arab public to murder Jews and glorify terrorists.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
27 November '17..

The most prominent Jewish leader in America did not mince words when it came to the question of whether the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should have an office in Washington, D.C. In a telegram to the president, he wrote, “Our country must not permit the killers of Jewish children and the assassins of American diplomats to open an office in Washington, D.C.”

But I’m not talking about last week’s news. I’m talking about 1976. The chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was Rabbi Alexander Schindler. The president was Gerald Ford. And what Schindler wrote about the PLO in 1976 is just as true today as it was back then.

Schindler was no hawk. In the years to follow, he would criticize the Israeli government on various issues. But he understood that Palestinian terrorists should not have an office in our nation’s capital. It saddens to me that when the issue came up again last week, so few in the American Jewish community spoke out against the PLO office.

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Der Stürmer and its enduring appeal for Israel-haters - by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

...However, no worries: as you can learn later this week at The New School, it’s not antisemitism if you change the old Der Stürmer slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” to “The Jewish state is our misfortune.”

Petra Marquardt-Bigman..
Elder of Ziyon..
27 November '17..

I just came across a tweet by Andrew Bennett about the notorious “historian” and ardent Israel-hater Ilan Pappé, who claims that “a shadowy Jewish elite deceives the world with a false ‘peace process’ to mask its true intent: the imprisonment of Palestinians.” Indicating his disdain for Pappé’s views, Bennett added a quote from the Nazi publication Der Stürmer: “This is the freedom they promise us/The freedom we see where Judah rules/Behind prison walls and bars/Within a dark prison sits/A humanity that longs for true freedom/And longs for rescue and release.”

I found the quote striking because of the line “where Judah rules.” Of course, the Nazis imagined the oppressive rule of “Judah” everywhere; but all too obviously, today’s anti-Israel activists remain indebted to the Nazi idea that Jewish rule is intolerable, even if it extends only over a tiny sliver of the Middle East.

When I looked up the quote, I found that it had appeared in the issue of 17 June 1943 of Der Stürmer,

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...And we will continue to build it up forever - by Amb. Danny Danon

...Looking back from where we are today, in a strong, thriving and independent Israel, it might be hard to fathom the tense atmosphere that preceded the vote, how momentous it was or the herculean efforts on the part of the Jewish leadership, which realized that the fate of their people rested on their shoulders.

Amb. Danny Danon..
Israel Hayom..
27 November '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/we-fulfilled-the-dream/?redirected=205251

Seventy years have passed since the moment that will forever be engraved in the history of our people, and since then, every one of us can picture themselves listening to the radio, tense with anticipation, during that historic vote on Nov. 29, 1947.

Every time we watch or listen to the long minutes of the vote, which seemed to last as long as our 2,000 years in the Diaspora, we get chills.

In 1897, Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl imagined the unimaginable when he wrote, "At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."

Fifty years later, the Zionist dream came true. Reality eclipsed anything we could have imagined and the U.N. recognized the establishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel. Today, 70 years after the vote, we stand with our heads held high, proud of our extraordinary achievements, and continue to believe and dream.

Looking back from where we are today, in a strong, thriving and independent Israel, it might be hard to fathom the tense atmosphere that preceded the vote, how momentous it was or the herculean efforts on the part of the Jewish leadership, which realized that the fate of their people rested on their shoulders.

Today, we are grateful to the 33 nations that voted in favor of founding the Jewish state, thereby changing history.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Actually Gil, the real fabrication is the tendentious Palestinian narrative - by Vic Rosenthal

...The truth, that Israel is populated by all kinds of people who are not alienated from their society and not suffering from endemic racism; that many Ashkenazim, Mizrahim (emphatically not “Arab-Jews”), Ethiopians, Druze and others, like each other and are friends; that many Israeli soldiers, Druze included, actually are overtly joyful from time to time, is simply too much for the social-justice-warrior conceptual scheme espoused by Hochberg and her ilk.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
27 November '17..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2017/11/whos-appropriating-whom/

Sick and tired of “Israel Apartheid Week” and other projects to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state, some Columbia University students have established “Hebrew Liberation Week” during which they emphasize Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land.

One of the exhibits (which was placed near the “apartheid wall” built by Students for Justice in Palestine) showed a Jew wearing a tallit standing together with other indigenous people in their traditional outfits. The idea, of course, was to drive home the point that the Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and not “settler-colonialists” as the progressive gospel insists.

But the sight infuriated a new professor at Columbia, Gil Hochberg. Hochberg, who is in some sense Jewish, previously taught Comparative Literature and Gender Studies (of course!) at UCLA, and received her doctorate from UC Berkeley. And she was outraged.

There is, of course, nothing wrong in suggesting an alliance between Jews and Indigenous people, and in the context of Jews living in Europe and elsewhere as “inside outsiders” and as part of internal European colonization (too much has been written about “The Jewish Question” for me to summarize here) it indeed makes sense to compare and point out similarities between the position of Jews as a fragile minority and the position of other oppressed groups, like the indigenous, colonized, enslaved, and more. However, placing such images underneath the Israeli flag makes them, at best, tasteless depictions of a pseudo alliance. Suggesting, as the posters do, that Jews have been driven out of their land (like indigenous people) and have finally returned to Israel–a trajectory that all indigenous people should unite behind–is a crude and cynical manipulation of (Jewish) history and a vulgar fabrication that not only makes no sense, but is also offensive in its use and abuse of indigenous peoples’ histories of oppression. (my emphasis)

What is crude, cynical or fabricated here? Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, were driven out “like indigenous people,” and did – unlike so many indigenous groups – succeed in reestablishing a sovereign state in their historical home.

The real fabrication is the tendentious Palestinian narrative. Do I need to remind readers yet again that the ones trying to steal the Jewish historical narrative – the real “cultural appropriators” – are the so-called “Palestinians,” most of whom are descended from late-19th or 20th century migrants? And that even the few that could trace their patrimony back to the 7th century Muslim conquest are, after all, descended from foreign colonialist invaders? And that the Palestinian story of Jewish ethnic cleansing is mostly false? And that the Palestinian Arabs and their allies fully intended to finish Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people and were only prevented by hard-fought Jewish victories in 1948 and 1967? And that the “Palestinians” have no unique language, religion, or common place of origin, and have only even considered themselves a people since the 1960s? The essence of their peoplehood, that which separates them from other Arabs and makes them uniquely Palestinian, is just their commitment to eternal hatred for and confrontation with Israel!

Surprise? Gaza’s electricity crisis continues but BBC reporting does not - by Hadar Sela

...Remarkably though, the BBC now seems to have lost interest in the subject of the plight of Gaza residents struggling to make do with a few hours of electricity a day – despite having extensively covered that story for six months.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
27 November '17..

When the long-running electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip was exacerbated by the Palestinian Authority’s decision to cut payments for electricity supplied to the territory in April of this year, BBC audiences saw coverage of that topic (albeit often lacking accurate background and context) on a variety of BBC platforms.

After Hamas and Fatah announced their latest ‘reconciliation’ in mid-September, BBC coverage of the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip suddenly waned and no further reporting on the topic has since appeared.

However, if BBC audiences perhaps assumed that reason for that dramatic drop in coverage is that the Hamas-Fatah ‘unity deal’ (which was reported profusely and enthusiastically by the BBC) has solved the long-standing crisis, they would be mistaken...

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PA's never ending campaign to use any topic, no matter how far fetched, as a reason to bash Israel - by Elder of Ziyon

...It should be noted that the only time the PA pretends to care about domestic violence against women is when outside agencies give it money earmarked specifically for that purpose. On its own, however, women are just another bullet to try to hurt Israel - and in the end the only people being hurt are the women themselves, who are doubly victimized

Elder of Ziyon..
26 November '17..

Saturday was the "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women."

The Palestinian Authority noted the day, in its usual way: by using it as a platform to blame Israel.

While one in four married Palestinian women report physical abuse, this is not mentioned in the official PA commemorations of the day. They brush aside any hint of those problems and only admit gender discrimination as a result of Arab heritage.

Instead, they say that all of the problems of Palestinian women are a result of the "occupation."

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Sunday, November 26, 2017

Israel Is A Shitty Country, at Least According to Two Faculty Members at Hebrew U. - by Sheri Oz

...Some might say that I need not critique the rest of the article, given that the premises upon which they base it are so faulty. In principle I agree, but since future academic writers may rely on later parts of the paper regardless, I want to respond to that as well. Let us see, then, how our shitty little country, that for some reason treats teenagers throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, stabbing people or running them over with cars as if they are terrorists, fares after an examination of its laws and court proceedings.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
24 November '17..

And here is proof from our very own Hebrew University of Jerusalem! Two faculty members at Hebrew U. got together to write an article about how Israel commits child abuse toward the Palestinian Arab children living under what they call the “settler-colonial regime”. This article is nothing more than a vehicle for promoting anti-Israel propaganda while taking a salary from an Israeli institute of higher learning that until recently had my high esteem.

Entitled, “Child arrest, settler colonialism, and the Israeli juvenile system: A case study of Occupied East Jerusalem“, this article found a home within the covers of the British Journal of Criminology (BJC). With a high impact factor, it is curious to me that they accepted this paper for publication given the problems I note below. It makes me wonder if they purposefully selected biased reviewers, those who go over manuscripts and either recommend them for publication with or without changes, or reject them. The problem is that, once published, this article can serve as a resource for other antisemites to cite as they churn out fake academic papers in the service of the demonization of Israel.

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Saturday, November 25, 2017

‘Religious Freedom’ and a Half-told Story at BBC Radio 4 - by Hadar Sela

...As we see, this report presented an entirely one-sided and distorted account of a story that was repeatedly portrayed as being solely about "the church's rights in the region" and with absolutely no mention of the other side of the story and the rights of the people affected by the church's actions. One might also question the timing of this story seeing as it actually broke several months ago but BBC audiences heard nothing about it until various church bodies began a PR campaign. As for Edward Stourton's claim that "religious freedom" includes real estate deals - that one will surely go down as one of the more ridiculous notions promoted by the BBC.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Waatch..
23 November '17..

The November 19th edition of the BBC Radio 4 religious affairs programme ‘Sunday‘ included an item described in its synopsis as follows:

“Madeline Davies from The Church Times tells Edward why the Greek Orthodox Church is selling it’s [sic] land in Israel.”

However, as listeners quickly found out, it in fact developed into a story about a draft bill currently awaiting debate in Israel’s Knesset.

Presenter Edward Stourton introduced the item.

Stourton: “In the holy land nothing stirs passions like the land itself. The Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem – Theophilos III – seems to be selling off an awful lot of it. Madeline Davies of the Church Times has been following the story and told me what’s happening.”

Davies: “The Greek Orthodox Patriarchy owns a large amount of land in Israel and it’s really the only source of income that the Patriarch has. They’ve got a lot of costs to cover and they have sold some land in order to cover those costs. There’s really a dispute over some of those sales; whether some of those sales were done with the full permission of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch and whether some of them were actually done without the approval of the church and should never have gone through.”

Stourton: “And why is it such a sensitive issue?”

Davies: “It’s really a question about the co-existence in Jerusalem. There’s a desire to ensure that the church is able to control its own land; to make its own decisions about whether it sells it and who to, or whether the government can really intervene in who owns land in the area.”

Stourton then promoted extremely partisan – and inaccurate – framing of the story:

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Friday, November 24, 2017

Truth Be Told, Belief in Palestinian Openness to Two-State Solution Amounts to Insanity - by Prof. Efraim Karsh

Rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Uri Avnery retreats into a counterfactual fantasyland.

Prof. Efraim Karsh..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 654..
23 November '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/belief-palestinian-openness-two-state-solution-insanity/

I never thought I would concur with anything written by veteran Israeli “peace” activist Uri Avnery, but I find myself in full agreement with his recent prognosis that “sheer stupidity plays a major role in the history of nations” and that the longstanding rejection of the two-state solution has been nothing short of grand idiocy.

But it is here that our consensus ends. For rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Avnery retreats into the counterfactual fantasyland in which he has been living for decades. “When I pointed this out [i.e., the two-state solution], right after the 1948 war,” he writes, “I was more or less alone. Now this is a worldwide consensus, everywhere except in Israel.”

Ignoring the vainglorious (mis)appropriation of the two-state solution by the then 25-year-old Avnery, this assertion is not only unfounded but the inverse of the truth. Far from being averse to the idea, the Zionist leadership accepted the two-state solution as early as 1937 when it was first raised by a British commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel.

And while this acceptance was somewhat half-hearted given that the proposed Jewish state occupied a mere 15% of the mandate territory west of the Jordan river, it was the Zionist leadership that 10 years later spearheaded the international campaign for the two-state solution that culminated in the UN partition resolution of November 1947.

Likewise, since the onset of the Oslo process in September 1993, five successive Israeli prime ministers – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu – have openly and unequivocally endorsed the two-state solution. Paradoxically, it was Yitzhak Rabin, posthumously glorified as a tireless “soldier of peace,” who envisaged a Palestinian “entity short of a state that will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its control,” while Netanyahu, whom Avnery berates for rejecting the two-state solution, has repeatedly proclaimed his support for the idea, including in a high-profile 2011 address to both houses of the US Congress.

By contrast, the Palestinian Arab leadership, as well the neighboring Arab states, have consistently rejected the two-state solution from the start. The July 1937 Peel Committee report led to the intensification of mass violence, begun the previous year and curtailed for the duration of the commission’s deliberations, while the November 1947 partition resolution triggered an immediate outburst of Palestinian-Arab violence, followed six months later by an all-Arab attempt to destroy the newly proclaimed State of Israel.

Again, Gaza terror smuggling not newsworthy for the BBC - by Hadar Sela

...The BBC – which is of course committed to helping its funding public understand “the world around them” – has so far ignored this story, thereby passing up yet another opportunity to help its audiences understand why Israel’s counter-terrorism measures are necessary – even as it continues to focus their attentions on the “appalling human rights situation inside Gaza”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
23 November '17..

Earlier this month BBC One viewers heard Andrew Marr portray Israeli counter-terrorism measures along the border with the Gaza Strip as follows during an interview with the Israeli prime minister:

Marr: “Now what is also clear, however, is that your policy for Gaza is not working: the policy of having a kind of cordon around Gaza, restricting what can come in and out – a kind of blockade of Gaza – has actually increased the power of Hamas in Gaza and mobilised the population behind Gaza because of the appalling human rights situation inside Gaza. This policy is simply not working.”

As has been noted here on many occasions, the BBC’s portrayal of that topic is usually at best superficial and at worst misleading and politically motivated. In the past audiences have seen or heard restrictions on the movement of people and very specific materials in and out of the Gaza Strip inaccurately described as “collective punishment” or a “siege”.

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The Cynical Political Opportunism of Politicizing a Family Death in the NY Times - by Simon Plosker

...There is something ironic about Jarrar’s playing up his Palestinian identity credentials seeing as he was the subject of a story in the New York Times itself in 2009. Note how the NY Times defined Jarrar then.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
23 November '17..

Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA asks the question in the New York Times:

While Jarrar may not have written the headline, a further read of his opinion piece shows that Jarrar’s father died in Jordan. Not Israel. Not the Palestinian territories.

So no, Israel certainly did not prevent Jarrar from mourning his father.

Jarrar was, however, prevented from visiting his extended family in Jenin, falling foul of an Israeli law targeting anyone who openly advocates boycotting Israelis or Israeli goods, including those produced over the Green Line.

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Thursday, November 23, 2017

(Video) Seventy years since UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Is It True the UN Created Israel? - Amb. Dore Gold

...He then reminded the UN, “The people which faithfully honored for 2,500 years the oath sworn by the Rivers of Babylon not to forget Jerusalem – this people will never reconcile itself with separation from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem had to be part of Israel. Eight days later he announced to the world that “for the State of Israel there has always been and always will be one capital only – Jerusalem the Eternal.” Ben-Gurion wasn’t dealing with the location of embassies.

Amb. Dore Gold..
Institute for Contemporary Affairs..
21 November '17..
Link: http://jcpa.org/video/true-un-created-israel-seventy-years-since-un-general-assembly-resolution-181/

We’re now approaching the 70th anniversary of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, what is also known as the Partition Plan which was adopted on November 29, 1947. It is often incorrectly asserted that the United Nations created the State of Israel by means of Resolution 181. That is completely untrue.

UN Resolution 181 took the idea that first began to emerge around the 1917 Balfour Declaration, emerged also with the League of Nations Mandate from 1922, but now called explicitly for an independent Jewish state alongside of an Arab state. What Resolution 181 did 70 years ago was it provided international legitimacy for the Jewish claim to statehood. It was a morally significant action, but like all UN General Assembly resolutions, it was not legally binding.

But what established Israel were not the actions of the United Nations. What actually established Israel was the Declaration of Independence by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, on May 15, 1948. To this day, what establishes states are not actions in the UN, despite what Mahmoud Abbas might hope. If you look at recently established countries – East Timor, Kosovo, South Sudan – all of them were established by a declaration of independence of their leaders. Even more recently in Kurdistan there was no declaration of independence. They don’t have an independent state.

Resolution 181 has a very important section that calls for the internationalization of Jerusalem by creating a separate entity known in Latin as a corpus separatum. This is not just an issue for historians because the internationalization proposal contained in Resolution 181 kept resurfacing over the years. For example, on March 1, 1999, the German ambassador to Israel wrote a note verbal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel which stated that the basis for any resolution of the issue of Jerusalem would be the corpus separatum from 1947 from Resolution 181. Germany at the time had the presidency of the European Union so it wasn’t just the opinion of one country; it conceivably could have represented all European states.

Shortly thereafter, a campaign began at the United Nations which called for reviving Resolution 181, led by the Palestinian UN Observer, Nasser al-Qudwa. Yasser Arafat actually had been at the UN headquarters visiting Secretary-General Kofi Annan. When I saw this happening as Israel’s ambassador at the time, I turned to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon for instructions – and I remember as though it was yesterday.

Reflections on Deir Yassin, the Nakba, and War Crimes - by Dr. Arnon Groiss

...Anyone expressing an aversion to war crimes should be expected to do so with regard to all parties to a conflict. Accusations of war crimes directed at one side only, without the slightest sign of self-criticism regarding one’s own atrocities, indicate a fundamental lack of integrity. Moreover, alongside denunciation of past cases, one should emphatically act against incitement to future war crimes, such as those spelled out or implied in the new Palestinian schoolbooks. Anyone who fails to do so is actually encouraging war crimes.

Dr. Arnon Groiss..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 653..
22 November '17..

Two important Hebrew-language books were published recently: Deir Yassin: The End of the Myth by Eliezer Tauber (Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir 2017), and Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956 by Adel Manna (Van Leer Institute Press, Hakibbutz Hameuhad Publishing House 2017). The value of these books emanates from their comprehensive presentation of data and facts hitherto not discussed.

Prof. Tauber, of Bar-Ilan University, gathered all the available testimonies related to the Deir Yassin battle from all involved parties, including both villagers and members of the attacking Etzel and Lehi underground groups. On the basis of these testimonies he provides a minute-by-minute analysis of the battle in the village’s various areas, indicating the death circumstances of each victim.

According to Tauber, Deir Yassin was the first case of house-to-house fighting in the 1948 war, as the defenders did not run away but fought from their houses until the end. The attackers broke into the houses by blowing up their doors, hurling hand grenades inside, and storming in while shooting. This resulted in many casualties, including non-combatants. Yet except for one case in which an attacker shot dead non-combatants who had surrendered and stepped out of their house, all the rest were killed during house-to-house fighting.

This conclusion is based on testimonies gathered from both surviving villagers and attackers.

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The New York Times and Hitler’s ‘Jolly Elf’ - by Sean Durns

The mufti not only escaped justice, he seems to have escaped judgment, as well. Except, perhaps, from those who see his methods as a model.

Sean Durns..
Algemeiner.com..
22 November '17..

Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the seminal figures of the 20th century. He was a founding father of Palestinian nationalism and a Nazi collaborator, whose support for terror and rejection of social and political equality for Jews in their ancestral homeland are imprinted on today’s Middle East.

Despite — or perhaps because of — his crimes, al-Husseini was often celebrated in life and whitewashed in death. And an obituary from The New York Times offers some clues as to why.

Born to a ruling Jerusalem family in 1895, al-Husseini did a stint in the Ottoman Army during World War I, and later served as an Arabic translator for Reuters‘ Jerusalem bureau in 1918. Shortly thereafter, he became a leading figure in violently opposing Zionism — the belief in Jewish self-determination.

He helped orchestrate the so-called Nebi Musa riots on April 4 and 5, 1920, in which Jerusalem’s Arab residents attacked Jewish men, women and children. Prior to the riot, posters were placed in the city’s Muslim quarter, exhorting residents to “Kill the Jews: There is no punishment for killing Jews.”

Al-Husseini was convicted in absentia by the ruling British authorities of the Mandate, but he was subsequently pardoned and appointed in 1921 to be mufti of Jerusalem — the highest Muslim cleric in the land.

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Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Like to guess what the BBC News website tells audiences is “preventing peace”? - by Hadar Sela

...Once again, the steering of BBC audiences towards a politically partisan view of what – and who – is “destroying a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict” and thus “preventing peace” is on display.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
21 November '17..

Those visiting the BBC News website’s Middle East page over the last few days may have noticed that an article by Yolande Knell first published in July 2016 has on two separate occasions been recycled as ‘related reading’.

On November 18th and 19th the article was promoted under its original title.

On November 19th and 20th it was promoted using the authoritative sounding heading “The issues preventing peace”.

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Reverse BDS. A shameful movement ashamed? by Jonathan Marks

...At the University of Michigan, and wherever BDS supporters have barely won after years of failing, the students and faculty that have fought BDS resolutions should not shy from seeking to have them reversed. Let them, for once, set the terms of the debate and put BDS, which cannot sustain close scrutiny, on the defensive.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary Magazine..
20 November '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/reverse-bds/

Since 2002, student activists have tried to pass anti-Israel divestment resolutions at the University of Michigan. This month, they succeeded on a 23-17 vote of the university’s Central Student Government. But opponents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement should not be demoralized by this result.

In spite of favorable circumstances for BDS in the United States, where fervent opposition to Donald Trump has opened a space for even marginal elements on the left, the BDS brand has not been selling at our colleges and universities. Perhaps it is the flirtation with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Perhaps it is BDS’ effective endorsement of violence against Israeli civilians wherever they may reside. Or perhaps it is BDS’ romance with unrepentant terrorists. But the University of Michigan’s resolution mentions the call of “Palestinian civil society” that supposedly initiated the BDS movement just once. And Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), whose very name obscures its primary purpose, the promotion of BDS, didn’t mention “Palestinian civil society” at all in its statement of support for divestment.

For BDS to triumph with students, it has to obscure just what it is students are being asked to vote for. One supporter of the resolution described its effect this way: “I understand the very deep connection many, many students have with Israel . . . I want to emphasize over and over again that this resolution emphasizes the voices of Palestinian students . . . and to give this community a voice for the first time in CSG history is to not take away from any other community.” That this claim, by no means limited to one student, had any purchase suggests that some proponents were not clued in to the resolution’s intent, however softened for pragmatic reasons. This is a movement dedicated to casting Israel out of the family of nations.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Who's more monstrous? Mass-murdering Charles Manson or mass-murdering Ahlam Tamimi? by Arnold Roth

...They need to know that the things Tamimi, the fugitive from US justice, stands for are no less monstrous than Manson and his "family". But far more dangerous than Manson since she's alive and free, incredibly influential on a scale that non-Arabic speakers cannot grasp, and protected by powerful friends.

Remorseless murdering psychopathic thug.
And Charles Manson.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
21 November '17..

Charles Manson died on Sunday in California. The BBC report of his death says he was

the notorious cult leader who directed his followers to commit a string of brutal murders, and who became a symbol of the dark side of 1960s counterculture... In 1969, his followers, known as the Manson Family, killed nine people. Among the victims of the killing spree was heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski. One of Manson's young followers, Susan Atkins, stabbed Tate to death and scrawled "PIG" on the home's front door with the actress's blood. Four other people at Tate's home were brutally stabbed to death. The next day, a wealthy couple in Los Angeles, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were also killed by the clan. The killings became known collectively as the Tate-LaBianca murders.

He was a monster on a mission. At his June 1970 trial in a Santa Monica, California, courtroom, the prosecution said Manson wanted the killings to spark a race war he called “Helter Skelter”. Manson was convinced the lyrics of a song of that name on the Beatles’ “White Album” contained coded messages describing that war.

Although Manson was not personally present at the scene of the killings, he was convicted of murder for directing his followers, and sentenced to death. After the California Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, this was commuted to life with the possibility of parole . But he spent the next 45 years of his life behind bars. He was denied parole no fewer than 22 times, the last time in 2012.

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A baseless liberal myth trying to create a Gaza version of the Marshall Plan - by Prof. Efraim Inbar

...A Gaza version of the Marshall Plan is a bad and harmful idea. Israel needs to persist with its carrot-and-stick policy, which has been substantially successful over the years, even if finding the perfect balance in this fragile equation is complicated and fraught with uncertainty.

Prof. Efraim Inbar..
Israel Hayom..
21 November '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-baseless-liberal-myth/

Voices from inside the IDF and out are advising Israel to spearhead a broad international aid plan for the Gaza Strip. According to the plan's initiators, its purpose would be to prevent economic deterioration that could spark unrest and bring to power forces even more radical than Hamas. Improving the economy in Gaza, supporters of the plan hope, would also reduce motivation for terrorism against Israel.

The logic behind this aid plan is flawed for several reasons:

1. The assumption that poverty creates terrorism is a factually baseless liberal myth. There is no correlation between standard of living and political violence and terror. Poor countries do not suffer from terrorism any more than richer countries. Take India, for example. The Palestinians launched their campaign of terror in 2000, when their economy was at its peak.

2. Believing that economic prosperity among Gazans will temper the worldview of Hamas' military wing is unforgivably naive. Radical ideology and religious zealotry will not be affected by the wealth of unarmed Gazans. In dictatorial regimes such as the one in Gaza, whoever controls the weapons makes the decisions. Middle Eastern tyrants do not hesitate to shoot their political rivals.

3. Large-scale economic aid to Gaza means supporting a bitter enemy determined to destroy the Jewish state. Did the West ever consider economic help for the people living under Islamic State's so-called caliphate in an attempt to curb increasing radicalization? Israel does not need to concern itself with the viability of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Radical Islam can be defeated only when enough Muslims realize the extremist version of their religion is the main source of their suffering, not their well-being.